Will Slingshot actually produce anything besides cushier jobs for restless talent at MySpace? Yahoo's Brickhouse is a cautionary tale. The San Francisco office was meant to house creative new projects — like Flickr, but built in-house. In practice, however, it's nearly impossible to pay employees as richly as the startup stock-option lottery does. A sinecure at a big company is less risky, and less rewarding. Will the likes of Granado produce a big payoff for MySpace? Unlikely. But it must be worth something to put studs out to pasture, rather than see them running with the herd at Facebook.